Watching horror movies to celebrate Halloween illustrates how horror as a film device is utilized to reflect societal and cultural fears.
As a genre, horror movies are perfect for Halloween season, igniting fear and inspiring screams that go perfectly with what’s informally known as “Spooky Season.” Horror movies are sometimes seen as mere flicks to throw on the TV with a group of friends to see who screams the loudest, but in doing so, we neglect the deeper meaning horror movies can contain. The truth is, horror movies are often used to portray contemporary societal fears.
Recently, The Substance (2024), starring Demi Moore, has swept through theatres, making $30 million worldwide at the box office so far. The movie follows a celebrity who begins taking a drug to make her temporarily appear youthful again. Overall, the film tackles themes of misogyny, gender construction, and unrealistic beauty standards.
All of these concepts are relevant fears for women of today.
“Horror’s a mirror in that it reflects the culture, the time period, the geography in which it is produced. It’s topical, and it’s relevant. Horror makes us think about these ideas and anxieties and provides a space for us to work through these anxieties,” Heather Roberts, a PhD candidate in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, said in an interview with The Journal. Roberts’ area of specialization is found footage horror films.
Horror movies often use complex allegories to represent relevant societal discomforts. For example, monsters are often used as thematic metaphors, like Godzilla, acting as a metaphor for the United States and nuclear power following World War II. However, with modern fears increasingly focused on tech, found footage horror may be the most current and applicable subsection of horror.
Found footage films attempt to profit from the idea that what the audience is seeing could be real. It seems as though the characters are filming the experience in real time, using techniques such as shaky hands and commentary behind the camera, as seen in the popular film The Blair Witch Project (1999).
The niche category of found footage horror films is a current example of how horror films reflect the fears of the society in which they were created. In today’s digital age, where people record almost everything on their phones, it’s becoming more relevant to portray the ways in which cameras can fail us, and the fears that can arise through digital culture, as seen in Levan Gabriadze’s Unfriended (2014). The film is set fully over a Skype call as an unknown , pretending to be a dead classmate, s a close group of friend’s video call.
“I think the genre as a whole is focused on contemporary anxieties about just how hypermediated our lives have become, like we construct our reality. We construct our identities through images and through screens,” Roberts said. Hypermediated is a media term used to describe an overexposure to various forms of media that are connected in a close way.
Found footage horror films can become frustrating, as the handheld cameras can’t catch everything. If a character is attacked, they may drop the camera, leaving audience to speculate on what’s occurring outside of the shot. This depiction of reality through cameras proves how cameras and broader technology can’t be trusted to produce genuine depictions of reality.
“The characters [of found footage films] rely on the kind of revelatory power of the camera. The camera acts as a stand in for the human eye, it sees things that the human eye can’t see. But there’s also a horror that comes from that, right?” Roberts said.
Today, many seem to be obsessed with documentation and technology. This offers the genre of found footage horror opportunities to create fresh approaches to current cultural anxieties surrounding social media, AI, deepfakes, and more.
Digging deep into horror reflects many contemporary anxieties. In our current age with the rise of AI and the encoming effects of technology, found footage horror films are important for seeing our fears reflected, and create space to confront discomfort.
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